The blog starts with an important
health warning: if you follow a large number of yes/ no people on Twitter, it
really grinds you down. Wouldn’t it be
good if we could focus on the issues that we think are most important and at
least have a common agenda before we start to bicker about the likelihood of
independence costing everyone in Scotland £1 or saving them £500? Or, wouldn’t
it be good to have a debate that goes beyond the, overly pedantic, focus on how
much Scotland contributes to, and receives from, the UK? Wouldn’t it be good if we focused almost
exclusively on the battle of ideas rather than often personal digs at
personalities? Wouldn’t it be good if people didn’t try to characterise you as
a yes or no person based on your blog (although please let me know if you think
that my points appear to have a yes/ no bias; an equal number of each would suggest
I got the balance right).
The arguments most interesting to
me are the ones that form part of the legacy of the old Yes campaign in the mid
to late 1990s – a campaign that brought together, briefly, the main political
parties in Scotland (bar, of course, the Conservatives). In my opinion, the
prospect of further constitutional change should force both the yes and no
camps to come to a clear view on the effect that 14 years of devolution has had
on these arguments:
1. Devolution will address the
democratic deficit.
The ‘democratic deficit’ refers
to the extent to which Scots vote for one party, in a UK General election, but receive
a government from another party. Attention to the democratic deficit was high
in the 1990s because Scotland elected a very small and diminishing number of
Conservative MPs but remained governed by the Conservatives (from 1970-4 and
1979-97). Attention to the deficit fell from 1997-2010 because the Scottish
part of UK elections continued to produce a large number of Labour MPs at a
time of UK Labour Government. However, it is now firmly back in the spotlight following
the election in 2010 that produced a Conservative-led coalition government.
In this light, it would be good
to hear Better Together supporters talk about what they think of the democratic
deficit in this context (we know the Yes campaign answer). Is the current
devolution settlement enough to produce a sense of accurate representation in Scotland?
2. Devolution would have saved
Scotland from Thatcherism
Thatcherism was often associated,
particularly in Scotland, with (a) a top-down, impositional style of policy
making; (b) a critical attitude to the public sector, in favour of market based
reforms; and, (c) the introduction of unpopular policies – as symbolised by the
reaction in Scotland to the poll tax. The
referendum agenda in the 1990s was often underpinned by an implicit or explicit
feeling that devolution could have saved Scotland from the worst excesses of
Thatcherism. Indeed, the Scottish Constitutional Convention’s vision was
developed at the same time that many of its participants were acting as the unelected
opposition to Conservative government rule.
In this light, it would be good to
hear both camps discuss the extent to which devolution currently allows the Scottish
Government to challenge or change major UK policies that may be relatively
unpopular in Scotland. To a large extent, we know the Yes campaign answer
(although the current ability of the SNP to ‘stand up for Scotland’ may be a
key part of its popularity). Indeed, attention to welfare reform and policies
such as the ‘bedroom tax’ are used to show the limits to devolution. It would
be good to hear a range of views within Better Together about the balance between
Scottish and UK powers. Perhaps, if the referendum debate was not build on a
binary yes/ no vote, more of its membership would feel able to speak out about
the need for the further devolution of responsibilities in area such as welfare
policy.
3. Devolution will produce new
politics
The 1990s campaign was
accompanied by a focus on the idea of ‘new politics’, in which Scottish
political practices, procedures and institutions would be radically different
from those in ‘old Westminster’. Yet, by these high expectations, new politics
has largely failed to deliver. The Scottish Government makes most policy without
substantial Scottish Parliament involvement, and measures to include the wider
public in politics had a limited impact. Most notably, there does not seem to
be a new party political culture despite the hope that coalition and minority
government (largely produced by a proportional electoral system) would foster
consensus building. If anything, minority government in 2007 was accompanied by
a rise in petty partisanship in plenary discussions (there was certainly a rise
in points of order to suggest that Scottish ministers were lying in Parliament)
and an apparent reduction in meaningful cross-party cooperation in committees. Perhaps
the only clear, relative, success was the initial rise in the representation of
women (but not ethnic minorities) in the Scottish Parliament.
In this light, it would be good to
hear both camps discuss the extent to which the agenda on independence allows
us to reconsider the importance of new politics. Is this the sort of political culture
that we want in Scotland (it is often entertaining and it helps us rehearse
important arguments)? Are there changes that could be made to institutions to
foster new relationships, or is it naïve to expect such changes to have a
short-term effect on party politics? Again,
the binary referendum makes this difficult, if only because few people are now
reflecting on the devolution experience so far.
4. The type of devolution proposed
in the 1990s largely solved the problems associated with proposals in the 1970s.
The proposals put forward by the
Scottish Constitutional Convention were, in part, made in response to the
argument that the details of 1970s devolution were ill thought out. Yet, some
issues still remain. Most notably, attention to the ‘West Lothian Question’ and
any perceived demand for English-votes-for-English-laws in Westminster will be heightened
if there are further devolved powers in Scotland. This issue would largely be
addressed by Scottish independence, but the focus on independence alone does
not allow us to consider the broader relationship between Scotland and the rest
of the UK if there is a no vote.
In this light, it would be good
to hear both camps discuss in more detail how that Scotland-rUk relationship
would and should develop after 2014.
5. Use the powers you have before
you ask for more (this is a more recent argument; in the 1990s devolution was
often sold as a settlement, not a process).
There is something intuitively
appealing about this argument before you really think about it. However, when
you do think about, it is reasonable to point out: (a) that successive Scottish
Governments *have* used their powers to promote different policy agendas in
areas such as compulsory education (note the relative emphasis in England on school
testing, competition and league tables), higher education (note their diverging
tuition fees policies), healthcare (note the relative emphasis in England on internal
markets and the promotion of the private sector) and local government (note the
generally less centralist relationship with local government in Scotland). Further,
successive Scottish Governments have expressed their frustrations with the
limitations to the devolved settlement, in specific areas such as airguns
(addressed by the Scotland Act 2012) and broader areas such as child poverty (the
Scottish Government can provide additional education and health related
services, but not determine benefit levels) and fuel poverty (the Scottish
Government can insulate homes and provide radiators but not influence the price
of fuel or level of benefits).
In this light, it would be good to
hear both camps discuss the extent to which the devolution settlement is fit for
purpose. Again, we know the Yes argument, but this may yet be further developed
in a more positive sense, beyond the abolition of the bedroom tax (for example,
the SNP recently signalled a broad commitment to reform policy on childcare
policy after independence – a point linked instantly by opponents to a relative
lack of SNP support among women). We also know that the Scotland Act 2012,
following the Calman Report, addressed some of these issues. However, there is
still a sense of unresolved business here – partly because no one really ever
designed Scotland’s responsibilities from scratch. Rather, the Scottish
Government largely inherited the responsibilities of the old Scottish Office and
the Scotland Act 2012 made some reforms at the margins. If Better Together
supporters could redesign the devolution settlement from scratch, what would
they devolve and what would they keep reserved?
However, I doubt that many of these
issues will receive much attention. Part of the problem here is that the debate
has now officially become polarised by the decision to have a simple yes/ no
vote on independence rather than some sort of multi-option ballot paper that also
allows people to express a preference for further devolution short of
independence (devo max is not always well defined, but we could take it to
refer broadly to devolution short of responsibility for foreign and defence
policy, many aspects of monetary policy and relations with the EU). The debate
has become ‘yes or no?’ rather than a wider discussion of what further devolved
powers could improve policy and policymaking in a Scottish political system.
Perhaps ironically to some, the main party to be open to that wider discussion
was the SNP, which recognised the importance of devo max in its National Conversation
(even if it was used largely to show that it would be less preferable to
independence). In contrast, the UK Government has begun to reject the idea that
constitutional change is on a spectrum from no to complete powers, arguing that
independence versus devolution are binary choices (perhaps contributing to the tendency
among many people, not just in the yes camp, to describe the ‘no campaign’
rather than the less catchy Better Together). In my opinion, it is an untenable
position, and it will seem even less defendable if there is a ‘no’ vote
followed by a promise from the UK political parties to extend devolution even further
(to the point that devolution and independence become even more difficult to distinguish
from each other).
